ColinWright

I'm 54, married, have a variety of often not-very-progressive interests and attitudes -- but keep stumbling over the fact that Israel seems to match everything I hate.
I'm more concerned with actual activity as opposed to the no-doubt laudable but questionably effective endless round of debate that goes on at Mondoweiss. If you feel similarly, please contact me. I can be e-mailed at [email protected]

RudyM says: “Yes, this is a problem. I sent my liberal evangelical brother a link to an earlier post regarding the letter from the Evangelical Lutheran church, and he responded by basically saying he wondered why I was so obsessed with Israel…”

Yeah. That seems to be the latest fallback position. We’re ‘obsessed’ about Israel for the same reason that others were ‘obsessed’ about civil rights, and ‘obsessed’ about Naziism, and ‘obsessed’ about slavery, and so on back to the prophets.

Evil is wrong, and we shouldn’t support it. That’s not a subtle position.

It’s all about feeling good about the outcome…without actually altering the outcome.

There’s to be an Israel — but we have to say how she’s to be good, and she has to agree she’s to be good. Come on — please, please agree. Stop showing us what’s in the sausage. We don’t want to know. A nice little Indian reservation, and we’ll all agree to call it a country, and we’ll pay some Palestinians enough so that they’ll agree too, and everyone will be happy…

German Lefty says: “I totally agree. However, the question was not if there actually is an equivalence but if Obama implied an equivalence in his speech. And I don’t think he did. He merely stated that both Jews and Palestinians experienced suffering. He did NOT say that these crimes were equally terrible (which they weren’t) or that they were caused by the same ethnic-nationalist mindset (which they were).”

So in other words, Adelson’s objection was to Obama worshipping graven images? Thou shalt have no god before me and all that? Jews, and Jews alone have suffered, and Israel is the only possible atonement for that suffering, and nothing can be allowed to jeopardize that?

David Doppler says: “Whatever kind of democratic state all of the people living there care to create for themselves. “

Actually put into practice, I’d have no problem with this — since I’m serenely confident it would lead to the end of anything resembling a Zionist state in short order.

As it should. The difficulty is that I don’t think many who pretend to advocate this are sincere. They will keep discovering ‘no negotiating partner,’ and uncovering ‘security concerns’ and just regrettably not getting around to making it happen.

So let’s not play. Do you think there should be a Jewish-dominated state in Palestine or do you really think it should be equal rights and let the chips fall where they may? If you had to choose between a state that was Jewish but regrettably not a democracy and a state that was a democracy but regrettably not Jewish, which would you take?

Annie Robbins says: “and who is responsible for our commotion mariene? do you imagine we all act in lockstep to defend a leader, whose actions require a suspension of logic… to send out a link she allegedly never viewed, was unaware regardless of the inflammatory nature of the title, because she was late for a train or plane?”

First, it’s very questionable if she’s the one who arranged for it to be ‘sent out.’

Second, it’s only inflammatory if you’re a Zionist. The accusation is a bit improbable — but I can’t say I’m too concerned about the feelings of Zionists.

Annie says: “…this is like herding cats. no one owns the memories of those victims. they do not belong to a political position, neither to zionist or freedom riders. they are relatives of our cherished comrades in this fight for freedom and justice. so of course by not removing herself from a position of leadership the onus falls on each and everyone of us to be true to ourselves and make a choice on which side we stand on here. whose fault is that? the side where it is ok to promote or excuse outrageous untrue claims, or the side to say “our movement cannot tolerate racism”. but we would never be in this position if this gross error was not made. instead it is us on the chopping block for not defending her? we cannot afford to be traveling in lies, that is for the other side…”